Updated | Search operation for missing Air Asia aircraft suspended

A massive search and rescue operation for a missing Air Asia flight traveling from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has been suspended due to lack of visibility.

Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control while flying over the Java Sea in bad weather. The Airbus A320-200 disappeared 42 minutes into its flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya.  No distress call was made.

There is an unconfirmed report of a wreckage spotted east of Belitung Island in the Java Sea, of the east coast of Samutra, 100 miles from where the plane was last tracked. 

The search and rescue operation has been suspended for the night after bad weather was reported in the area. Planes from Indonesia and Singapore had been scouring an area of sea between Kalimantan and Java.

No wreckage has been found, an Indonesia official told the BBC.

The flight left the Indonesian city of Surabaya in eastern Java at 05:20 local time (22:20 GMT) and was due to arrive in Singapore at 08:30 (00:30 GMT).

The missing jet had requested a "deviation" from the flight path due to storm clouds, AirAsia said.

The contact was lost about 42 minutes after the aircraft took off from Indonesia’s Surabaya airport, Hadi Mustofa, an official of the transportation ministry told Indonesia’s MetroTV. A minute later, the aircraft disappeared from the radar, and at 7:55 local time, it was declared missing.

The flight was supposed to arrive early this morning. Hours later, the families of the passengers have very little information

The plane had six crew and 154 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, according to the general manager of Surabaya’s Juanda airport, Trikora Raharjo. 

Most of those on board were Indonesian, but there were six others on board, including three South Koreans, and one each from Singapore, Britain and Malaysia.

"The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian air traffic control," the airline said in a statement.

The plane lost contact when it was believed to be over the Java Sea between Kalimantan and Java islands, Mustofa said. He said the weather in the area was cloudy.

The Singapore statement said search and rescue operations had been activated by the Indonesian authorities. It said the Singapore air force and the navy also were searching with two C-130 planes.

This is the third major air incident for south-east Asia this year. Malaysia’s national airline Malaysia Airlines has suffered two disasters this year - flights MH370 and MH17 - but AirAsia has never lost a plane.

On 8 March, Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a wide-bodied Boeing 777, went missing soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. It remains missing until this day with 239 people in one of the biggest aviation mysteries. 

Another Malaysia Airlines flight, also a Boeing 777, was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July. A total of 298 people on board were killed.